Every fall students around the world get ready for the new school year by purchasing clothes and notebooks. In theory, these students will embark on a nine-month journey of learning, free to pursue topics in a diverse array of subjects. In reality, education is quickly becoming a form of indoctrination, designed to support those in power (If you don’t believe me, just read Michel Foucault’s work on the intimate linkage between knowledge and power: knowledge itself is an exercise of power).

Yoda and King Faisal.

As I noted earlier, the use of education for social engineering is hardly unique to authoritarian “Middle Eastern” regimes; it is present in the United States as well. Every child’s favorite crayon brand, Crayolla, introduced a new color for the new school year and not everyone is happy. The name of the new blue—which replaces the yellow “dandelion”—is “bluetiful”. While proponents of the non-word say it encourages “creativity”, I have to say that I do not agree. By encouraging young children to use non-words—which also are confusing, given that “beautiful” is a difficult word to spell in and of itself—Crayolla is aiding and abetting the creation of a poorly educated generation. Text messaging and instant messaging have already wreaked havoc on the spelling capabilities of many Americans, and this just furthers an unfortunate trend.

Personally, I believe that the protests against the national anthem are wrong even if Mr. James finds protesting the protests to be “divisive”. I would argue that the protests themselves divided Americans long before Mr. Trump was even on the scene, and readers know that I have written about divisions in American society in the past. Unfortunately, state media continues to assault nationalist ideas while—at the same time—supporting sports figures who do not care for their countries. ESPN ran a video of Turkish NBA star Enes Kanter, who says that the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the city of Oklahoma, will always be in his heart because “When I [he] lost my family and when I [he] lost my home, you guys gave me family and you guys gave me home”. What ESPN neglects to write in either of their stories (including the one regarding his loss of Turkish citizenship), is that Mr. Kanter supports the globalist Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey blames for the botched coup in July 2016. That American media should be so sympathetic to a man who openly supports a shadowy religious leader that supported a coup which killed over 200 people is an insult to readers, but it is part and parcel of a bigger plan: destroy the nation state and delegitimize all who support the nation state in order to create a globalist world system. By continually educating ourselves, independent of major news media, we can avoid falling for the traps of division.